Day 21 Carnivore Recalibrate: When Things Get Messy, Notice What Still Works
Day 21. Sinus infection, frozen shoulder, broken tooth. On paper, I'm falling apart.
If you’ve ever tried to change your diet in a meaningful way, you know this moment. The part where your brain starts doing math:
Is this the diet?
Is this just life happening at the same time?
If I feel worse, does that mean I should stop?
If I feel better, am I just getting lucky?
This post is for that moment. Not to convince you to eat meat. Not to sell you on a worldview. Just to share a way of thinking that can keep you steady when the experiment stops being clean.
The first question: “Is this a real infection or a transition reaction?”
Two weeks ago, I was debating whether I was dealing with a bug or something people call “oxalate dumping.”
If you’ve never heard that term, the claim is simple: when you suddenly remove high-oxalate foods (greens, nuts, almonds are the classic example), some people feel temporarily awful. Hay-feverish. Flared. Stiff. Off.
And it’s not “keto flu.”
I’m not here to prove that theory to you. I’m here to say: it’s a real enough possibility that it belongs on the list when you’re changing inputs fast.
Here’s the practical part.
If someone suspects oxalates are part of the problem, one common “test” is paradoxical: you add a small amount back in and see if symptoms ease. Not as a lifestyle. As a clue.
So I did that. A few almonds.
And then I broke a tooth.
I ended up getting an emergency crown, and while all that was happening, I kept feeling worse. Enough that I went to the doctor and was told it was a sinus infection. I got a round of antibiotics.
Here’s what made it confusing: I started feeling better the next day. That’s usually too fast to credit the antibiotic as the whole explanation.
So the honest answer is: jury’s still out.
And that is a useful answer to get comfortable with.
Sometimes your job is not to be certain. Sometimes your job is to stay oriented.
The second question: “What is my bailout condition?”
If you’re going to run a real experiment on your body, decide ahead of time what “stop” looks like.
Not in a dramatic way. In a sane way.
For me, my bailout condition is heart palpitations and muscle cramps that I cannot control with salt and minerals over a few days.
That’s my line.
It matters because it keeps the experiment from becoming a loyalty test. I’m not trying to “tough it out.” I’m trying to learn something without getting stupid.
So far, I have not had to bail.
I used a lot of minerals and salt in the first week. I still salt my food heavily. I backed off the extra minerals as things steadied.
No palpitations. No cramps.
That alone removes one major reason to quit early.
If you take nothing else from this post, take this: pick your bailout condition before you need it.
The third question: “What outcome do I actually care about?”
By day 21, I’ve dropped about two inches off my waist.
That’s positive, but it’s not the main point for me.
The main point is cravings. Food noise. The pull.
If you know that pull, you know it is not subtle.
Driving past a fast food place and feeling your attention bend toward it. Seeing something sweet on a counter and feeling like it is talking to you. Waking up and immediately thinking about what you can get.
That’s the thing I wanted to change.
And this is where carnivore earns my respect.
For me, the cravings quiet fast.
Second day, the edge came off. Third day, they were barely there. And by now, day 21, it’s been consistently quiet.
Eating becomes something you do because you’re actually hungry. Not because you need a hit, a comfort, a distraction, or a reward.
That alone can be worth the whole experiment, even when other things are messy.
“But what about inflammation? Shouldn’t carnivore fix that too?”
Maybe. Sometimes.
In my case, my left shoulder has gotten worse. It is an old rotator cuff situation that flares. I ended up scheduling a sports medicine visit because I’ve been down this road before and it usually means rehab and sometimes a steroid shot.
So no, carnivore has not magically erased that.
That is also useful information.
One of the quiet traps in health is thinking a method has to solve everything to be valid. Real life does not work that way.
You can have a diet that quiets cravings and still have a shoulder that needs mechanical attention. You can have improved body composition and still catch an infection. You can be doing something right and still have days that feel off.
If you are trying something like this
A few grounded suggestions, especially if your first couple weeks feel rough:
1. Do not interpret every symptom as proof the diet is wrong. Sometimes you are sick. Sometimes you are adapting. Sometimes you changed five variables at once and you need time to separate them.
2. Pick a bailout condition. Something clear, safety-based, and personal. Not “I feel weird.” More like “If X does not resolve with reasonable interventions in Y days, I stop or ease out.”
3. Salt and minerals are not optional for many people early on. Especially if you are prone to cramps, palpitations, headaches, or that hollow “keto flu” feeling.
4. Know what you are actually trying to change. If your main goal is fat loss, you will evaluate the week differently than if your main goal is freedom from cravings.
5. If you have active GI issues, get guidance. I’m a fan of carnivore-ish resets for gut calm, but doing it blindly when you are already fragile can create unnecessary chaos.
Day 21 looks chaotic on the surface. Underneath, the signal I care about is strong: the pull is gone.
If you’ve been living under that pull for years, you know why that matters.
Let’s keep going…